DAVAO CITY—This city marked its 80th charter day with a history parade predating to the early-1900s, when it was informally called “Little Tokyo” by migrant Japanese workers in abaca plantations.
The city charter was inaugurated on March 1, 1937, by then-Secretary Elpidio Quirino, who later became President, although succeeding commemoration was held in the middle of the month.
But the city’s history predates that official declaration as a chartered city, to the time in 1848, when José Cruz de Oyanguren of Vergara, Spain led a Spanish contingent and established a Christian settlement in an area of mangrove swamps, which is now Bolton Riverside.
Davao was then ruled by a chieftain, Datu Bago, who had a settlement on the banks of the Davao River.
A street has been named Uyanguren and is the busiest Chinatown section near the first wharf, while Datu Bago has been honored with the name of the highest award given annually to outstanding Davaoeños.
From a former abaca economy in the 1900s, the city has since become Mindanao’s premier southern seaport, with a population size estimated to be 1.67 million last year, a size that is the fourth largest, next only to the three populous cities in Metro Manila.
From almost a dead town in the middle of the 1980s after being made the laboratory of the New People’s Army for its urban warfare and the government’s armed vigilante unit, the Alsa Masa, the city rose to become the country’s fastest-growing region with an economy worth P217.14 billion, or more than $4 billion.
While it remained an agricultural area and noted for its endemic fruits, like durian, mangosteen and lanzones, with coconut and banana as major exports, its construction sector continued to be bullish, with P7.651 billion worth of projects registered in 2015.
By 2012, its visitor arrival breached the one-million mark and zoomed to 1.7 billion by 2017.
With its mayor for 22 years landing the highest post in Malacanang, interest in the city and its surrounding areas ballooned, with business leads reaching as high as more than P800 billion, much of it in the weeks following the announcement that Rodrigo Duterte won the Presidency.
But apparently, the country’s splendid economic performance during the last five years, has also seen growth in the other major urban cities in Mindanao, including brisk constructions in Cagayan de Oro City and Butuan City, and land-banking activities by some of the country’s leading chains of shopping malls and housing developers.
The parade of the history of Davao City lasted for six hours.
Image credits: Manuel Cayon